10 Utensils Common In Cooking In Africa

Strategies utensils in food preparation and in cooking are usually unique to Africa. Take into account!

1. Cooking Pot

In modern Africa, many families have switched to getting cooking utensils made of metallic, ceramic and other materials, particularly if using modern cooking fires such as electric or gas that will fire. However, the traditional earthenware cooking pot still remains a favourite for various.

The traditional cooking pot is made of clay, and then fired within a kiln. The processes involved in producing a cooking pot and a water pot are different, since a water pot only in order to keep water cool cannot do this because withstand the fire.

The traditional cooking pot is often used over an open fire, for example a wood fire, or at a hearth, or higher a charcoal burner. The earthy smell of the cooking pot lends a unique flavour to your food. Fresh beans or meat simmered in a pot have quite augment flavour to when cooked in a metallic soup pot.

The insulatory qualities from the clay pot also weigh down the cooking process, which further adds to the flavour among the food.

2. Mortar and Pestle

A mortar and pestle used always be standard equipment in many African households, and often still are. A mortar and pestle were used when pounding grain such as millet or sorghum to find the chaff from the grain.

In western Africa, cooked yam or cocoyam is also pounded into foo-foo. In Uganda, roasted groundnuts are pounded into odii paste, while raw groundnuts are pounded into ebinyewa groundnut powder.

The Africa mortar and pestle are large for heavy duty pounding, differing from their counterpart common in western cooking, along with that is a small utensil for gently rubbing spices.

3. Mingling Stick

Most African kitchens possess a mingling stick, or indeed a whole collection of them. They are associated with wood, and come in every size and a lot of other shapes. One of the most common may be the wooden mingling stick having a flat head, used to stir food, but more often to mingle posho, ugali or kuon - maize meal or millet meal bread.

Every woman has your favourite mingling stick, which she claims produces the outcomes!

4. Gourd

In many communities, a gourd can be a special as well as handy utensil. A gourd is a climbing plant, which creates a long or round fruit. When this fruit matures and dries, it takes its very useful container. A ripe gourd is often brown or golden in colour. The woody inside is then hollowed out and emptied.

The Kalenjin of western Kenya use their gourds to ferment milk in. And of course, each woman has her very own favourite gourd.

When a gourd is cut lengthwise into two, one then has two calabashes, which can very useful for serving items. The clean, woody odor of drinking water in a calabash incredibly unique. In northern Uganda,visitors were often served homemade beer in calabashes.

Several ethnic communities in Africa also employ calabashes as musical instruments, including the Acoli of northern Uganda and communities in western Africa, pertaining to example in Mali.

6. Winnowing Tray

A winnowing tray - or several - still is a treasured utensil in several African homes. A winnowing tray is woven the actual reeds, and he is useful for sorting rice. After pounding or threshing, maize, millet, sorghum, rice, simsim and groundnuts are then winnowed in a tray to part ways the grain from the chaff.

In some communities, special reed trays are also used to offer food for festive occurrences.

7. Grinding Stone

In many communities, a grinding stone was the centre piece in your home. Some homesteads had a grinding hut or house, where various grinding stones of various sizes were housed, for grinding millet, sorghum, or odii. Grinding stones have gradually been replaced by mills.

8. Knives

Like in any other cuisine, knives tend to be in African food preparation too. However, traditional knives differed from modern programs. In Uganda for example, a short, double-edged knife was popular for peeling matoke - cooking banana - and for scaling fish or skinning slaughtered family pets.

9. Sieve

Every cuisine in exciting world of uses sieves. Sieves in Africa are at this moment mostly associated with metal or plastic. Traditionally, they were woven through soft reeds. They had been to sieve flour, or beer, before serving that will.

10. Shards

In many homes, shards from broken pots and broken calabashes were valued utensils. The actual planet Acoli culture for example, calabash shards were treasured for smoothing out millet bread before serving. Apparently, nothing did quite and also a bit of broken calabash. And of course, each woman had her favourite shards!

Winnowing trays, mingling sticks, gourds, sieves, calabashes and cooking pots were while still often are included a gifts a completely new bride receives to set up her personal.

As new foods, and new methods of food preparation establish themselves on the continent, new utensils will also replace the old ones. Indeed, the new labour-saving machines are welcome everywhere.

However, one cannot always quite deny the charm of typical African cooking utensils.

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